🚀 go-pugleaf

Dan Parvaz wrote:
> 
> Just one author's experience:
> 
> I tend to not cripple my stuff for a couple of reasons: (1) I don't need
> my shareware fees to survive, and (2) it generates more ill will than it's
> worth.  Type! (my pre-2.0 keyboard driver) only provides a gentle reminder
> for a few seconds before normal use begins, and *that* it only does some
> of the time. My own personal philosophy.
> 
> |Not paying for shareware is not larceny. The cost of using that shareware is
> |the cost of time in dealing with the crippling and pop-up reminders. That's
> |the consumers choice. That's the peril of shareware.
> 
> My attorney disagrees.  Under most s/w license agreements (and use of the
> program in question implies agreement to terms of the program's license),
> you have a certain period to try the program out before you are obligated
> to pay the registration fee.  My trusting you to not steal doesn't mean
> that you're not stealing.

That's hypothetical. I already indicated in my post that shareware programmers 
could - perhaps should - sue to get their rightful fees. Your lawyer would 
probably agree that this would be nearly impossible, much less compensatory.

In the real world of fiancial and economic transactions, the limitation is 
ultimately enforcement. Shareware authors - as implied by the name alone - 
forego enforcement options (such as being forced to buy a package in a wrapper, 
or anti-piracy restriction, or dongles) in favour of broad distribution. The 
obligation lies strictly with the consumer, who may or mey not abide by the 
license they may or may not have read. But the point is actually, practically 
moot here except as a theoretical debate, isn't it?

It's a consumers world out there now. That's why most major software 
manufacturers no longer include anti-piracy protection. You're talking of the 
ideal, I'm speaking as a retailer of the real world. The one in which I cannot 
take a customer opened software back from him'her if they've ripped the seal 
and possibly used it, desite them saying they cannot use it on their system for 
any reason whatsoever. It's just the nature of the software market. And if you 
distribute a program via the shareware channel, then you have to accept the 
hard, atomistic, consumer reality that people will most often NOT pay for 
shareware.